Yu's ANALYSIS OF CURRENCY 889around 465 when Ch'en Ching-chih obtained permission to allow private mint-
ing of cash. The private minters cut the weight and thickness of the coins so
severely that some wags coined some memorable phrases in honor of the situ-
ation: that coins were so light that they floated on top of water. that you might
crush them if you grabbed them too tightly, or that a string of a thousand coins
took no more than three inches of space. The price of at 'ou of rice (mal in Korean)
rose to 10,000 pieces of cash, and retail sales were brought to a halt because
consumers did not have enough cash to make purchases.2I
K'ung I of the Southern Ch'i dynasty (ca. 479-83) provided his explanation
for the deterioration of copper currency after the mid-fifth century in the Liu
Sung era. By contrast with the previous five hundred years when the five-shu
coin of the Han had remained constant in shape, size, and weight, the govern-
ment after that period was too stingy in its use of copper in casting cash and too
sparing of the technology used to mint coins, primarily because they aimed to
maximize the supply of coins from the available metal raw materials by mak-
ing each coin smaller and lighter. Unfortunately, the government by its own mint-
ing policies only succeeded in debasing the currency and destroying its value
as a medium of exchange. K'ung thought that the only solution was to return to
the greater weight and higher standards of the five-shu coin of the Han dynasty.22
In short, the lessons Yu learned from the monetary experience of the North-
ern and Southern Dynasties period was that neither the reduction or disappear-
ance of cash from the market (north China), nor the debasement of coins and
the flooding of the market with cheap cash (south China) were desirable devel-
opments. A better way had to be found to find a stable currency.
Ch'iu Chiin: Penny Cash. Yu felt that Ch'iu Chiln of the Ming dynasty had
found the answer to this problem. Ch'iu wrote that no one had discovered the
fundamentals of creating an unchanging and permanent method for minting cash
until K'ung I had warned the government against being stingy in the use of cop-
per or sparing in the technology of manufacture (plilsoktong pur 'a egOI1g ). Ch'iu
explained that K'ung meant that the coin had to be thick and pure, the metal
evenly distributed, and the outer rim round and made correctly. It should cost
one piece of cash (eh'ien) to make one coin so that the profits for counterfeit-
ers would be reduced to zero. In other words, the only guarantee against coun-
terfeiting was no-profit minting, which obviously ruled out any possibility of a
multiple denomination coin.
Ch'iucommented that in the history of cash in China to the mid-Ming dynasty
there had been numerous small, poorly made, or underweight coins in addition
to multiple denomination coins, but only the five-shu coin of the Han, or later
the K'ai-yiian t'lIl1g-I){[O coin of the Tang, "hit the mark for perfection." Later
multiple denomination coins like the "three-cash" or "ten-cash" soon were dri-
ven from the marketplace and only those coins minted in the fashion of the the
Ka'i-yiian coin continued in circulation to the mid-Ming.2l In other words, his-
tory had taught the world that there were only a few coins that had retained pub-
lic confidence and prevented debasement and inflation because the face values